Tampering with genius: the 'new' Hitchhiker's book

When looking at books to buy, I always become somewhat suspicious when I see two authors on the front page. Not a co-authoring project, but a 'brand' name at the top, and the real author at the bottom.

This is the kind of thing which happens with thriller writers like James Patterson. It is a commercial enterprise: Patterson outlines the plot, and the hack writer churns out several hundred pages of thriller. Patterson gives it his seal of approval and it's on your supermarket bookshelves a few weeks later.

That's fine. James Patterson is alive. He is making no bones about the fact that his creative juices overflow so wildly he cannot possibly write down all of his ideas for trashy thrillers himself.

But when I find Britain's best-loved author of the twentieth century, Douglas Adams, fronting a book by Eoin Colfer, I become shocked. Adams is dead. He can't give that seal of approval. He can have no say over the product bearing his name.

I become even more shocked - appalled, even - when I see that Colfer has picked up the thread of the work for which Adams is known, the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy series. Colfer has written part six of three. This is a crime.

Euan Ferguson wrote a review in the Observer:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2009/oct/11/and-another-thing-douglas-adams

He said the book is really quite good. I believe him. But that is not the point. This is a series of books with which millions of people have fallen in love over the years. It shouldn't be expanded on, extended or tampered with. These are Adams' characters. This is his universe which he chose to share with us. It is not for another author to come along and bandwagon the operation, a few years after the author's death, and carry on the franchise. The whole thing seems crass.

It is so crassly commercial that nobody even in the world of rap music has attempted it. Yes, Tupac and Biggie have both had flourishing careers after their untimely deaths. But not even Puff Daddy has attempted to create a Notorious BIG album, with no real material from the rotund rapper himself. He just samples a bit of Biggie rapping, brings in an alive rapper and a honey-voiced singer, and he has the 'Duets' project. That is honest by comparison.

There is no suggestion, even, that Adams was thinking up a final book and Colfer is picking it up. No, he feels the man's muse and writes a book in Adams's name. And, worse still, there may be more to come.

Ferguson says this in the Observer:
Colfer has given us a delight, and an eye-opener, and hope, and, close as this book does on the line "The end of one of the middles", the near-promise of more to come.

This is not a near-promise. When I saw the advert for the book on the tube, I felt a nagging distress, a feeling that one of my heroes was being tampered with, with no chance of recourse.

Who knows if Adams would mind. Many splendid creative types take horrific decisions late in their career (see Beatles video game for evidence). Adams' wife did sanction the project.

But I'm sure many, many fans of the Hitchhiker's series of books mind very much. The best way to put a stop to this tawdrey enterprise is to avoid buying or reading Colfer's book, and hope it disappears, with no more additions.

The strange similarity of GPs and IT support

Walking up to the doctor, my hobble became slightly less so. This is a recurring theme for me. You wake up and think, 'I really do need a trip to the doctor'. And then, when faced with the GP, you think, 'perhaps I didn't need to visit the doctor quite so much'. It's as if by sheer force of seeing these highly-paid public servants, you get a bit better.

That said, my knee was making a funny clicking sound, and I was having trouble descending stairs. A lifetime of hearing about footballers doing their anterior cruciate - a six month layoff at least - meant I should get it checked out.

The doctor was a young Asian woman, perhaps younger than I. She sat at her desk with that posture and look on her face which spoke of confidence, almost arrogance. I eased myself into the seat, making a thing of it.

I explained the situation. Trip to the Lakes; Scafell, Striding Edge (yes, that's right, both in two days). Subsequent knee pain. She was unimpressed. It was clear that if you didn't have cholera or plague, you were wasting her time.

She got me on the bed, and waggled my knee about. I yelped. She said there wasn't any fluid - and left it at that. Had I not done my cruciate? Would I not be out from my desk job for the next six months?

The doctor went back to her desk; I followed, gingerly.
She told me I had a bit of swelling, and I should take some paracetemol for a week and if things had not improved to come back. She turned back to her computer as a way of concluding our interview.

Feeling shortchanged from my free appointment, I reflected that GPs often dealing with people very much as IT support staff do. GPs suggest a week of paracetemol just the same as IT support suggest switching your computer off and turning it back on again.

And the galling thing is that it nearly always works.

the staffordshire hoard

Walking through Birmingham town centre, I saw a good old-fashioned queue patiently formed. It was a bit cold, a bit wet; a typical Birmingham day. It was one of those queues you rarely see any more. It was an experience in itself. The people in it felt they had little prospect of reaching the front, and when there, they would have quite forgotten what purpose they had in mind.

I tried to work out what the queue was for. It could have been the post office, but the days of the really good post office queue are over. No one knows where their local one is, and the places are so forbidding and lacking in value that only those on a serious nostalgia trip would think of going there on a Monday morning.

No, it had to be something else, something really good. I carried on walking and saw a big sign advertising the wonders of Matthew Boulton. As a former employee of the Science Museum, my heart leapt at people from Boulton's home town still being so inspired by this titan of the industrual revolution, that they would wish to queue for several hours on an autumn weekday for a look at a steam engine.

I wandered round the corner and saw the queue was indeed leading to the Birmingham Museum and Art Gallery. I walked up to the entrance, a move which aroused some consternation among the queuing public.

"You here for the gold?" said the lady from the museum.
"I'm here for Boulton," said I.
"Well walk straight in, then, and keep to the right."
"What's the gold you are referring to?"
"It's the Staffordshire Hoard," said the lady, impatiently. This was clearly common knowledge.
"And how long is the queue?"
"About three-and-a-half hours."
"Is it always that long?"
"No, if you come at 9am, you might only have to wait for an hour-and-a-half."

I decided I was better off spending some time with Matthew Boulton, and walked into the desolate gallery. I reflected that this was one of those great British events, the one that everybody had spotted. It was the combination of the lucky find, the anglo-saxon hoard, much bigger and of more value than anyone had thought. Quickly dusted off and put on public display, the Brummies, seeing the Staffordshire hoard as a local history find of unparalleled importance, had seen that here was really something. Here was a once in a generation opportunity to queue.